Professional Profile: Ernie Belleau - 1983

Name: Ernie Belleau - 1983

Title: owner

Company: Belleau Lake Corp.

Location: East Wakefield, Mass.

Birthplace: Salem, Mass. - October 8, 1915

He spent his entire life in Salem until 1969, when he moved to East Wakefield to open the Belleau Lake Corp. Ernie recalls that his first job involved taking care of a horse and several cows. He was paid 15 cents an hour for his work which was a lot of money at the time. He got his start in real estate a few years later when he began working for his father’s firm. E. Belleau and Son, Church Renovators. By 1941, Ernie was president and owner of the company. For a while Ernie didn’t have enough church renovation work, but he had good carpenters he didn’t want to lose, so to keep them working he started building houses to sell. He is responsible for approximately 450 homes being built in Salem, Gloucester, Marblehead, Swampscott, Peabody, Danvers, Saugus and Lynn. In 1969, he moved to East Wakefield and started Belleau Lake Corp. he headed a development project in town, which linked several ponds together to form a lake, three miles long with 17 miles of shoreline. He sold over 200 lots on Belleau Lake, which was named after him. Ernie, an avid hunter and fisherman, stocked the lake with fish up until 1979 and it remains an excellent spot for fishing. Over the years, Ernie has put together so many difficult land deals, that people began referring to him as the “Land and Farm Magician.” He recently completed negotiations on the sale of 6,200 acres near Piermont, N.H. He co-brokered the $2.6 million sale with Jim Masiello of the Masiello Agency and Donald Stone of Stone Associates. Last spring, Ernie went to Lima, Peru to learn more about the business of shrimp farming and to expand his hunting experience. While in Lima, he met with the President of Peru, Fernando Belaunde Terry and the Mayor of Lima, Eduardo Orrego Villacorta. Ernie feels that Peru is an emerging country. Peru raises 25 million pounds of fish a year for private consumption and export. The country has both gold and copper mines and gas and oil have been discovered there. Ernie is now the broker for two businesses in Peru. One is a woolen mill which grosses $7 million per year. The other is a wood mill, which can manufacture 3,000 doors per day. One of the great advantages of running a business in Peru, Ernie says, is that the country pays businesses an extra 30 percent of the value of the merchandise they export from Peru. Ernie is a hunter and world traveller. He has hunted all kinds of game including elephants, tigers and polar bears. The Amazon River, Kenya, Africa and the North Pole are only a few of the fascinating places he’s been. The only area of the world he hasn’t been to yet is the South Pole. He plans to go to India and Russia on his next trip. Even tough Ernie has been all over the globe, he maintains that in this county, “We live in the best place in the world.”